Bees face a barrage of chemical and environmental burdens

Wild and domesticated bees are under pressure from pesticides, diseases and habitat degradation, but it remains challenging to quantify their impacts and understand how they act together.

‘We’re measuring habitat loss, emerging pathogens, competition and new agricultural pesticides individually, but we are much less good at really understanding how they interact with each other,’ says Mark Brown, parasitologist and bee biologist at Royal Holloway University of London, UK. Open questions include whether a landscape with meagre flower resources renders bees more susceptible to parasites or to pesticides, and whether specific combinations of stresses harm bees more than others.